Hot Topics:

Longmont murder trial postponed again: George Ruibal OK with wait

New DNA evidence prompts third delay

By Pierrette J. Shields Longmont Times-Call

Posted:
09/18/2012 09:54:18 AM MDT

Updated:
09/18/2012 10:01:23 AM MDT

BOULDER -- A Longmont man's second-degree murder trial was rescheduled for the third time on Tuesday to allow both prosecutors and defense attorneys to weigh new DNA evidence in 2007 death of his girlfriend, Dana Pechin.

George Ruibal, 57, is charged with second-degree murder in 45-year-old Pechin's strangulation-related death, and his trial was scheduled to begin Tuesday. Instead, Boulder District Judge Thomas Mulvahill granted a joint motion to continue the trial for the third time and reset it to begin the week of Nov. 5. It was originally set for January but was continued until May and then September. Ruibal told the judge he was OK with waiving his right to a speedy trial to allow the attorneys time to mull the new evidence.

George Ruibal

Ruibal was arrested and charged in April 2011 after a Boulder County grand jury reviewed the case and handed down a five-page indictment. Prosecutors took the case to the grand jury after a statewide cold-case task force and an outside police agency reviewed the Longmont Police Department's investigation.

Ruibal and Pechin lived together in an apartment on the 300 block of 15th Avenue. He called police to report that he and a co-worker who had given him a ride home found her dead under a blanket on the couch. Her injuries were so severe that police initially suspected she had been in an accident. But about a month after she died, the Boulder County coroner ruled Pechin's death a homicide and determined her cause of death was a closed head injury associated with manual strangulation.

Ruibal said she had come home from a trip to the store beaten up after someone had "jumped" her, but investigators were unable to verify the claim. An injury on Ruibal's face made detectives suspect there had been an altercation between Pechin and Ruibal. About a month after Pechin died, the Boulder County coroner ruled her death a homicide and determined her cause of death was a closed head injury associated with manual strangulation.

Prosecutor Tim Johnson said on Tuesday that the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which has a backlog of cases to analyze for scientific evidence, just sent along the new DNA results.

Article Comments

We reserve the right to remove any comment that violates our ground rules, is spammy, NSFW, defamatory, rude, reckless to the community, etc.

We expect everyone to be respectful of other commenters. It's fine to have differences of opinion, but there's no need to act like a jerk.

Use your own words (don't copy and paste from elsewhere), be honest and don't pretend to be someone (or something) you're not.

Our commenting section is self-policing, so if you see a comment that violates our ground rules, flag it (mouse over to the far right of the commenter's name until you see the flag symbol and click that), then we'll review it.

The Boulder alt-country band gives its EPs names such as Death and Resurrection, and its songs bear the mark of hard truths and sin. But the punk energy behind the playing, and the sense that it's all in good fun, make it OK to dance to a song like "Death." Full Story